Disclaimer: Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates does not belong to me. Which is too bad for me, but good for the characters. O_o;;; Any original character (and there are a LOT of them) belong to me. :P
Warnings: Swearing, violence, blood, gore, psychotic animals, insane fairies and a crippled freak. Not suitable for the young and impressionable. Possible slash, possible Mary-Sue.
Rating: R
Author's Note: This story (what I have of it, so far) has received a rather nice welcome in The Forecastle section of The Pirate's Cove, Saba's wonderful website and forum. It's based on the animated cartoon Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates, and focuses on a lot of characters (not just Peter, Wendy and Hook). Two or three characters in specific: Bill Jukes, Slightly, and Hard-To-Hit (who did not, I believe, appear in the novel). If you've never seen the cartoon, note that Billy Jukes is approximately 13-15 years old or so in it, and he's not a tattooed freakazoid. Also, the character of Hard-To-Hit is not in the novel, but in the cartoon he is Tiger Lily's younger brother. Just so you know.
I've created a lot of original characters for this (not my fault, they came at me out of the blue, I swear) and though I've tried to make them the best I can, I would really appreciate any help and/or advice.
I hope you enjoy the story. It's my baby. ^.^
Questions, comments, etc, please review or email me at funkadelic_gnome@hotmail.com
Damnation, Salvation, Fire and Steel
Prologue
By: The Sadistic Cow
Funkadelic_gnome@hotmail.com
My mother always used to tell me I was special. When I was little, she would take me into her lap, hug me and whisper in my ear just how special I was. I was the sun and the moon, the light and the dark, her very own angel sent straight from heaven. The very best gift she was ever given, a piece of living magic. I was her everything and nothing would take me away from her, or her away from me. And, for so long, I believed her.
But then she died. Just one morning, she didn't wake up.
My father said the bad fairies came and ate her soul. My father always said weird things like that. He didn't like magic or fantasy things like Mother and I did. When he grew tired of trying to persuade me that fairies and magic didn't exist, he started telling me they were evil, nasty things that little boys would do well to stay away from.
Mother got really pissed at him for that, and he didn't start saying it again until after she died. I guess it was his way of dealing with the pain, though he could have found a better way. Telling his only son that evil fairies came and gobbled down his mother's soul in the night while everyone slept is not the best way to bond family together during a tragedy.
When Mother died, Father changed. He was a bit stiff anyways, but Mother's death only made it worse. Much, much worse. He stopped laughing completely, he never smiled, he yelled at me a lot more and he started to hit the liquor with a wild frenzy found mostly in rabid animals. My grandmother, widowed and without a penny to her name, was too scared of him to make him stop. After all, he had a lot on his plate, didn't he? His wife just died, leaving a six year old boy behind to care for, not to mention an old woman who couldn't take care of herself to save her life, and it didn't help that he himself wasn't rolling about in wealth.
Yes, Father had a lot on his mind. But that doesn't excuse his mistreatment of us. And it certainly doesn't excuse dumping me in an orphanage when I was seven because he shot himself in the face.
I don't know which as worse—life in the orphanage or the thought that my father killed himself because I wasn't special anymore. When did I stop being special? Was I convenient only because I kept Mother with him? If I remember right, Father used to hug me too, and put me up on his shoulders and spin me around until I felt sick in the stomach from laughing and dizziness.
I still remember our Sunday suppers. Ha! They're my favourite memories, since Father and I used to do the cooking to give Mother some rest, and we would always foul it up. The only thing we could get right were the after-supper snacks. So every Sunday instead of a proper meal we would eat treats until our bellies ached, and Mother would laugh at us and say 'I told you so!'. Then we'd help her clean up the mess we made in the kitchen…or try to. Food fights were common in our house.
We never had food fights at the orphanage. The nuns there were so stiff; I always thought God had made them swear never to laugh again after he caught them the first time. I told Timothy that and the little rat went and told Sister Mary Patrick, who took the switch to me.
I never told Timothy anything ever again. I also punched him in the face and got flogged again for it.
I ran away from the orphanage when I was eight and lived under a bridge for a few years. It wasn't so bad; the train going by was loud and kept me awake a lot, but it was dry under there and nobody really bothered me. Sometimes teenagers came around at night to drink their father's booze and shouted a lot. They never saw me though, because I never wanted them to.
Peter found me when I was ten and a half. It was winter, and he hung around and visited for a couple of weeks, bringing me blankets and food when it was too wretched out to go and scrounge some up from the garbage bins myself. When he asked me if I wanted to come back to Never Land with him, I was awfully sick. I think I probably would have agreed to eat a cat that night if he'd asked. As it was, I only remember him telling me I could fly with him in the sky and fight Indians.
I said, "Oh yeah, gimme some beans. I'm slightly sure if I fart hard enough I could fly anyway", or something to that extent.
Like I said, I was really sick.
So Peter took me back to Never Land. He had to carry me since even if Tinkerbell had sprinkled fairy dust on me I was in no condition to fly anywhere on my own. Happy thoughts, or any thought for that matter, were beyond me at that point. So away we went, and Peter took me to see Great Big Little Panther right away, who fixed me up and made my fever go away. Not before I threw up on him though. Peter laughed at that.
When I finally saw Peter's home (now my home) in the Underground House, I was ecstatic. I felt special again, since I was the only boy there other then Peter. The two of us played together for hours on end for a couple of years, but then Peter started going out into the real world. After a little while of this, he brought another boy back with him, someone named Nibs.
I wasn't happy about that. It's not Nibs' fault or anything, not really. I just felt like I was being replaced, that I wasn't good enough for Peter anymore because I wasn't special. If I was special he wouldn't have needed Nibs, right? As it was, Peter played with both of us but named Nibs as his second in command. That only made me feel worse and I decided to make a goal to out-do Nibs in anything and everything possible.
I haven't succeeded yet, by the way. At least, not in the normal stuff.
Normal stuff, you ask? Well…the stuff that isn't normal is why I'm writing in this journal thing here. I've decided that even if I can't tell anybody what happened, I could at least write it down and have it remembered in some way, maybe for people a hundred years from now to find and read. I slightly doubt that I'm going to get out of this alive…I doubt that any of us are going to get out alive.
And if we do, we'll probably all have toys in the attic, if you catch my drift.
"Just a couple sandwiches short of a picnic," as my father used to say.
Speaking of Father…I wish these damn Unseelie's would quit digging into my memories. Really, if they wanted to scare me they could just as easily take the shape of a giant poisonous spider or, like they did earlier, take over the body of an animal and try to eat me.
I actually feel sorry for those poor monkeys. They didn't deserve to have their brains turned to mush when their bodies were taken over. When this is all over I think there will be a few species of Never Land animals to avenge. Especially poor Neko. Wendy will be heartbroken when she finds out what happened to him.
Anyway…
Billy is sitting next to me, holding up a candle for light. He's as much a part of this as I am. And if Peter so much as brings up the fact that he's a pirate to try and downplay his importance, I will hit him over the head with the frying pan I used to kill that possessed wombat that snuck in here five minutes ago. What's left of its brain is smelling up the cave and it's starting to make me feel slightly sick.
We're all here, us defenders of Never Land. All eight of us, sitting in a circle while I scribble all this down. There would have been eleven, but Abura was murdered by a goblin-ridden water buffalo, and Honkers and Shankers are now servants of the Unseelie Court. This isn't how I thought the night would end. This isn't how I thought my life would end!
I slightly wish that Peter was here to guide me, but Peter would think this was just some sort of grand adventure. Everyone here can tell you it certainly is not. It's hell on earth and I want it to end. I think we all do. Besides…Peter isn't in any position to do anything about it. After all, when you're stuck on a ship in the middle of a body of water, without the ability to fly, and prevented from reaching the island by mermaids driven insane, there's not a whole lot you can do to help.
Remember how I was saying I didn't feel special? How I was unhappy because not being special turned my life upside down?
For your information, I wish I could go back to being not special. I would give anything to go back to that misery, because if I could then I would be a hell of a lot happier than I am right now, being special.
Why am I special?
Well, I'm the only one who can save Never Land from a psychotic half-breed Unseelie who stole the crown from its rightful wearer, turned the entire island into a pit of shadowy darkness and is hell-bent on killing off anyone who refuses to bow at his feet.
I am, according to the scriptures Bustopher found, the Stormrider. I bear Darkflame, the Doomsword, and it is my duty as the bearer of this sword to protect Never Land from those too powerful for anyone else to stand against.
In the candlelight everyone's faces look so worn, so tired. I can hear the Unseelie-corrupted dwarves hammering away at the rocks that separate them from us. Within the hour, they'll be in here with us and we'll have to fight. I don't know if we'll win. There's so many of them and so few of us, and we're all exhausted enough as it is. We're not going to last long, of that I'm sure.
I don't know if I can do this. I'm scared, so scared of what could happen. I've used Darkflame once, but…but it scares me. I don't know if I'll be able to control myself the next time I have to use it. I don't want to use it again, but I don't have much of a choice.
I shouldn't have to do this. This shouldn't be happening at all.
God, I'm scared.
To be continued...
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